Toll Brothers is planning to demolish five properties on this historic commercial corridor. Can the city rally to save an essential piece of Philly's urban fabric?
A day after city officials confirmed Toll's moves to clear five properties from Jewelers Row and replace them with an 80-unit tower, a pall of uncertainty has settled over the street.
Retailers and craftspeople who have operated on the row for years - if not decades - huddled on sidewalks sharing information, wondering how they'd been kept in the dark about Toll's plans.
"I'm so angry, it's unbelievable," said Frank G. Schaffer, proprietor of FGS Gems in one of the Jewelers Row buildings eyed for demolition. "You don't just uproot a business like this and move."
...The Sansom Street jewelers weren't the only ones distressed by Toll's plans.
An online petition posted late Thursday asking Philadelphia planning and development director Anne Fadullon to intervene against the development had attracted more than 1,000 signatures by late Friday afternoon.
Fadullon said in an statement that she welcomes the historic preservation community's input on the proposal and hopes the situation leads "to a broader conversation of how we can meet both our historic preservation responsibilities and our economic development needs."
Original source: Philly.com
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